Rosetta Stone offers online trial of its Irish program

Rosetta Stone is celebrating St. Patrick’s Day by encouraging people to learn a bit of Irish — a language spoken today by fewer than 55,000 people.

The Arlington-based language technology company is offering a free, online trial of its Irish language-learning program. Consumers can access the trial through Rosetta Stone’s Facebook page. Next week, the company will launch a Facebook application that allows users to send an Irish greeting to friends.

“We would like everyone to go beyond just wearing their favorite green shirt on St. Patrick’s Day and thought it would be fun for anyone to learn a few Irish words through our free trial and be able to send a message in Irish to their friends through the Facebook app,” Duane Sider, director of learning at Rosetta Stone, said in a statement.